Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

I saw a short video clip some time back this year. Then, I was blessed with the life-changing Last Lecture book by my bestie who wanted me to have it. The book was a blessing. There were so many lessons that I learnt.

1) Dreams: A Pastor once said this during service, "If your dreams don’t frighten you, they aren’t big enough." So are your dream(s) big enough?

2) Fundamentals: You got to have the fundamentals down otherwise the fancy stuff does not work. How true this is! Having a solid foundation in life - education, career, spiritual, relationship etc, matters. If anything is built on a shaky foundation, it will crumble to earth when faced in times of adversity. However, when anything is built on a solid foundation, it will remain even when a tsunami crashed into it.

3) Playing sports - the head fake: teamwork, perseverance, sportsmanship, value of hardwork, an ability to deal with adversity. I recall my cgl sharing after a run that to see a guy true colours is to observe how he plays in a sports game.

4) Brick walls are there for a reason – they are there to show us how badly we want things and they are there to show us our dedication. Once you get over the brick wall - even if someone has to practically throw you over - it can be helpful to others to tell them how you overcome it.

5) Make a decision: Tigger or Eeyore?

6) Watch what they do and NOT what they say. I found this advice especially useful. From the video and the book, Randy gave an advice for his daughter, Chloe. From a female colleague of his, "When it comes to men who is romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do."

7) Get a feedback loop and listen to it! The hardest part is listening to it.

8) Don’t complain, just work harder. Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I am guilty of it. Randy Pausch believed that if you took 1/10 of the energy put into complaining and applying it into solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things turn out.

9) Be good at something, it makes you valuable.

10) If you live life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. Its not about right planning, its about right living.